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Our readers who like podcasts or can tune into Resonance 104.4 fm, a radio art station in London will want to listen in Thursday evening at 10.30 PM BST (9th May 2007), to catch an interview with anime expert Helen McCarthy. She'll be talking on Alex Fitch's show "I'm ready for my close-up", where they'll be covering anime in general, Helen's current anime season at the Barbican and hopefully the Anime Encyclopedia too. The podcast will be put on-line on Friday 10th May.

Wired have a very good article about the popular Japanese bulletin board 2-chan. The article focuses on the impact 2-channel has had in Japan, from cancelling advertising campaigns, to producing 830,000 replacement folded paper cranes, mass suicides, solving crime and even helping Train Man become a national phenomenon.

Anime fans will be pleased to know that Leicester based UK anime convention AmeCon 2007 is now open for registration. So book now to avoid disappointment. The convention is scheduled for 10th-12th August 2007 and is the third convention held by the AmeCon crew.

We've just got an e-mail from the pioneering folks at Genoen who'd like to let us know that they've posted up the latest Geneon Spot audio podcast, featuring an interview with Taliesin Jaffe (the ADR director of R.O.D -The TV-, Hellsing, Hellsing Ultimate, BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad, etc.), who talks about script adaptation work and the realities of being an anime voice actor.

The nice folks at Geneon Entertainment have sent us news that they've launched a website for Hellsing Ultimate, the OAV incarnation of the fan favourite anime series. The website contains some details about the series, it's creator, DVD release dates, along with a host of downloads like desktop wallpaper and chat icons.

We've been sent a press release from Japanese video game and toy concept development company Gamewax, who have developed a interesting concept in learning Japanese remotely. They claim to be the UK's first fully interactive recordable on-line Japanese language school, Urban Japanese. Distance learning is nothing new, as universities and other education institutions have been tinkering with the concepts for years now, but this is certainly the first private company in the UK we're aware of that offer Japanese lessons.

With Halloween kicking in, it's the season for ghouls and ghosts with anime fans in London celebrating at J-Pop Go. Andes Sudo, one of our talented Otaku News artists has also been busy, making some great wallpaper of Tima one of the Otaku News Mascots. So go on and check out our wallpaper section and download it today! ^_^

BBC News and many other news sources are currently reporting that 29,549 clips have been removed from YouTube after the Japanese media companies complained of copyright infringement. The popular video hosting site (recently bought by Google for $1.65bn USD) frequently had clips from Japanese TV shows along with some anime as well.

It is not clear from the article what content has been removed, if it's Japanese TV programmes, more extreme quiz shows, comedy sketches and skits such as Matrix Pong, users of YouTube will have to discover that for themselves. What will be interesting to find out is if YouTube will automatically take down any future content or if the Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) will have to file more requests.

I got into an "arguement" with somebody at work over the term Otaku. They accused me of dressing up in costume and being obssively knowledgeable about the subject. "Fine," I said. "Just like the rest of the perverts who you see dressed up in strange costumes and hanging round in parks on Sundays, or that gather in huge crowds dressed in outlandish gear singing stupid songs and generally idolising over their obessions. Who spend huge amounts of money buying all the latest things. They have pictures on their bedroom walls. They follow the latest news and interviews very great glee. They seek out fellow fanatics and discuss the latest events. Such obsessives like you. Only in this country they are known as football fans."

So note down the otaku are just the same as football fan strategy and use it next time people call you weird for liking those strange Japanese cartoons! ^_-

ADV Films has joined the anime downloading craze with the opening of their new digital download store, ADV Universe. Anime fans can now, after signing at the official website, browse and shop for episodes of their favorite ADV releases, including Gilgamesh, Godannar, and Comic Party to watch on their computer through Windows Media Player.

While the price for episode downloading has not been disclosed, signing up for service at ADV Universe is free! And as an added incentive, fans will receive the first episode of Guyver: The Bio-Booster Armor, soon to be released by ADV, for free after signing up. It’s just one more way at how much anime fandom is progressing in this high-tech, digital age.

Due to some unexplained difficulties with our webhost that were not easy to resolve, it appears that all e-mails sent to the webmaster [at] otakunews [dot] com e-mail address in the last two weeks have been lost. Luckily the other Otaku News e-mail accounts were unaffected, however if you did try to e-mail in the last two weeks, you may want to resend it! I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused, up until now we've only had minor issues with our web hosting company.

In a really good of example of the traditional world colliding with the high-tech world, the Mainichi Daily News are running an interesting article about adverts for apprentice geisha Kyoto. Recently the number of applicants had steadily started to drop, until an enterprising teahouse started blogging about the experience of being an apprentice geisha and started posting adverts for applications.

Looks like Bandai have acknowledged the online fanscene and are having a go at running an online shop.

The shop features your usual host of DVDs, manga and toys under the Bandai/Beez licence. The popular titles include My-Hime, classic Gundam, SCRYed, Witch Hunter Robin, Wolf's Rain and Cowboy Bebop. There's pretty much a category for everything under the Bandai licence, including Tamagotchi and of course, the immortal Power Rangers brand.

Our source says the website is on trial for now, and if it goes well, Bandai will surely be adding more. Check out the trial website and tell your friends!

The Mainichi Daily News have started to release Manga in English on their website. They've called it Manglish (manga in English), taking talents from their MangaTown site, and providing an English translation of the original text by rolling your mouse over the Japanese text.

The debut story is called Six Feet Girl, about a 16 year old girl who is 180cm tall (which actually makes her 5"9'). Apparently she gets depressed every time she starts a new school when the other students laugh at her height. The manga is by Gyugo (or Jugo) Hazuki. Looking at the site it's not clear how good the translation will be, especially if English speaking readers are used to a certain standard, it appears to by translated by a Japanese speaker into English. Currently MDN have posted two pages, and will add a new page each weekday.

Billingual Manga for Japanese people wishing to learn English isn't that uncommon and is frequently sought after by English speaking collectors outside of Japan. However this marks an interesting start - a Japanese publisher releasing free daily manga direct from Japan, some industry analysts predicted this a few years ago and it's good to see that MDN are now publishing manga in English, hopefully more Japanese firms will start soon too.

Bad news for American anime fans. Anime News Network has reported that Anime Forest.com, the popular on-line rental site, will be shutting down after three years of service. An e-mail was sent out to customers of the site informing them of the closing, though reasons as to why were not given. Per-rental services ceased on April 7th, while subscription services will end on April 30. Anime Forest thanks their customers for their support in the e-mail. They will be missed.

When we go to conventions and other anime relelated events, we always tend to wear Otaku News T-shirts, they've generated a lot of interest with people asking where can they buy them, we always felt bad telling people that they can't. So after a lot of hunting around we've found a good on-line t-shirt seller to team up with to sell t-shirts for both guys and gals, along with other items.

We've set up two seperate shops, one for our US Readers, and another for our readers in the UK and Europe, so if you're interested select and shop and have a good, look. We've also produced some t-shirts with witty slogans on, which are ideal for anime conventions!

With their Roppongi based studio they will cover Japanese politics, economy, society and culture in Japanese, English and Chinese for several hours a day. JIN intend to expand in the near future with a 24 hour broadcasting system with 12 languages.

We've been listening to what our readers want, and we know that many anime fans are also keen PSP owners. Which is why we've made a PSP version of Otaku News, designed especially for Sony's box of tricks. It has less content than the full versions of this site, but is designed for quick loading times and navigation, which is ideal when you're out and about with wireless access. To access it all you have to do is visit http://www.otakunews.com/psp/ (go on, bookmark it on your PSP you know you want to). The main article content and DVD reviews are identical to the other editions of Otaku News.

Unfortunately for us hugely popular gaming site IGN aren't seeking the Otaku News Crew, but they are seeking freelancers who love anime and manga! So if you live in the US, are over 18 and fancy being a freelance writer, why not drop them a line, they'll even pay you! If on the other hand you want to work for free and support grassroots anime fandom then why not contact us! We can't pay you, but we can always give you a sense of satisfaction that is better than money, (honest) and since we're also a lot slacker about deadlines too! ^_-

UK on-line retailer's Play.com and Amazon.co.uk have started to take pre-orders for Howl's Moving Castle, they both listing the release date as 13th March 2006. Otaku News had heard rumours about Optimum wanting to release Howl earlier, however in order to qualify for an Academy Award, they had to delay the release. What's interesting to note that the boxshots from Amazon and Play are different, which leads us to believe that both sites have produced mock-ups as they are missing vital details on the packaging such as the BBFC rating logo.

A quick check on Amazon.com reveals that they're taking pre-orders for twodifferent versions of Howl's Moving Castle, which are priced the same, we suspect that Amazon will remove one edition nearer the launch date.

If Optimum and Buena Vista can release Howl's Moving Castle in March, they should be highly commended, since the Japanese DVD has just been released this November and Ghibli titles have been traditonally very slow to get US and UK DVD releases.

Japan Today have a good feature on English OK, a website dedicated to enabling Japanese companies to sell their products and services to English speaking customers based in Japan. It's an interesting concept, since everyone loves Japan and wants to visit (well at least we do ^_-), but the language barrier can prove tricky, since Japanese isn't always the easiest language to pick up.

The article makes a good read not only from a cultural perspective but also a business one. It's nice to know that some companies are keen to sell to gaijin.

Blogging is all the rage at the moment, with everyone and their dog putting up content about this that and everything. Many blogs are just angst fests. However hunting around can be interesting and rewarding with many different takes on anime fandom and Japanese Culture in general. Photo Blog site Flickr offers a wealth of photos for otaku, featuring Gundam, some nice Catbus, the cast of Naruto and Evangelion! One enterprising otaku even has his own Calcifer to keep his car warm. There are tons of cool images for you too look at on Flickr, so why not add your own! ^_^

Central Park Media have just sent us details about their Kakurenbo: Hide & Seek website. In addition to information about the CG animation's awards, creators, and English and Japanese voice actors (including Junko Takeuchi - the voice of Naruto), there's a special video recorded at this year's San Diego Comic-Con.

Here at Otaku News we like to give something back to our readers as a way of saying thank you for reading this site. That's why we've commissioned the talented WingYun-Man and Rik Nicol to come up with some nice desktop wallpaper for you to download. The design in question is the new Shinsengumi Miyuki wallpaper, which features Otaku News mascot Miyuki as a member of the Shinsengumi. The wallpaper is based on the successful postcard campaign from AyaCon 2005.

The good folks at JList.com dropped us a line to tell us that they're selling iTunes Japan Music Cards, these are vouchers that you can use to redeem music on Apple's iTunes system. Using these vouchers you can buy plenty of music that is only available on the Japanese version of iTunes, which is very handy if you like certain songs, but don't want to import a whole album.

After posting the press release from KyuuCon yesterday, it's been brought to our attention by various members of UK anime fandom that there is something fishy about KyuuCON. Firstly it appears that the venue mentioned the Plymouth Pavillions has not heard of KyuuCON or the organisers in question. The second major alarm bell is where the payments are going, into a personal bank account and not a building society account/non-profit account in the conventions name.

What's also interesting is their sudden change of heart, and the way they've just moved everything back a year. Plus this thread brought to our attention at the AyaCon Forum. At this current moment in time, based on what we have heard, we believe that KyuuCON is either very poorly organised or a cash grabbing scam, either way, we suggest you avoid KyuuCON for now.

Here at Otaku News we like to listen to what you, our readers say. Without your feedback we would not know what stories you want us to cover and what features you like using on this site. Our most popular feature request to date has been for an RSS Feed, so the Otaku News Crew have finally made feeds for each edition of Otaku News. For more details check out the RSS Feed Details page.

We always want more feedback about our coverage and the features we can offer, so please feel free to contact us if you want to see more things on this site! Don't be afraid to e-mail us with news stories either!

The people over at AOL have just sent details of their new Japanese Pop Station. It seems that AOL Radio listeners enjoyed the Video Game Scores station so much that AOL have added a Japanese Pop station due to popular demand!

The Mainichi Daily News have just announced the winners of their Unseen Japan photograph competition. Readers were asked to "Submit a photo that visualizes a rarely seen side of Japan", the result is a selection of photos that give a great insight into a Japan that you would not normally see in anime. ^_-

Discussions are underway to bring tracks from the 16 Final Fantasy Albums to the UK version of the iTunes website. The tracks would include songs from Final 1 through to XI as well as other FF themed CDs such as the ‘dear friends’ concerts and the 'Black Mage' albums.

Here at Otaku News we listen to you, our readers comments and will always try to improve the site based on what we hear. The most common request we've had so far is for a review section. So the Otaku News Crew started to work away, writing reviews and also writing the code for you to navigate the reviews. At the moment we've put up some DVD reviews for you to read, over time we intend to add a lot more. Currently all editions of Otaku News will show all DVDs, regardless of their region. Eventually once we have a substantial number of reviews the UK and US Editions will only display reviews from their region.

We've also adopted a policy of being honest, so far one review already has a rating of 2 out of 10! We hope you find this addition to the site helpful and enjoying reading our opinions, of course if you don't like it and think you can do better, then by all means tell us, we are always looking for talented contributors to write news articles, reviews and anything else of interest to otaku!

Wil Overton who many of our readers will know was the artist for popular Super Nintendo Magazine SuperPlay published many moons ago (and also influenced a large amount of UK fan artists with his style), has sent us details of his latest enterprise.

The end of 2004 marked the end of another year, and it also marked another landmark for anime fandom, the most accurate and complete dedicated unofficial resource for Studio Ghibli fans - The Miyazaki Web celebrates it's 10th Birthday on December 31st 2004.

The site is really better known as a part of Nausicaa.net and has often been mistaken as the Official Studio Ghibli Website, because of it's professional finish and level of detail. Many have used it for research on Studio Ghibli and it's founder Oscar winning director Hayao Miyazaki. The Miyazaki web is more than a website it also has it's own mailing list, the Miyazaki Mailing List, which has grown steadily each year for the last 13 years, the majority of it's subscribers are American, but for a first time the UK is now the second most subscribed country, beating Japan to third place.

Here's wishing the Miyazaki Web a Happy Birthday, and good luck with the next 10 years!

We've just heard from Dragon, the webmaster for United Publications (a popular UK import anime and manga retailer) that they've slashed their prices by up to 20% on most US DVDs due to the strength of the Pound, our UK readers with multiregion set-ups should check it out!

Firstly we must apologise for the lack of updates recently, the holiday season has got the better of the Otaku News Crew! To celebrate the festive season one of the Otaku News artists, Andes Sudo has been a busy bunny working on some Tima Christmas Desktop Wallpaper for you to download and enjoy.

It's been a busy week for me which is why I haven't posted as much news as I would like on Otaku News this week. So today is catch up day! One of the advantages of running your own news website means that you can plug your other side projects now and again (no Spike that doesn't mean you can start posting about all the yaoi you draw).

OK, first up on Monday November 22nd, Frightmoore University an up-and-coming webcomic I'm the webmaster for, has just made the milestone of posting it's 100th page! Gigi has drawn a little celebratory image of the main characters having a little party. Frightmoore has been running since 2001, and in April 2004 when an updated version of the site was launched on it's own domain name were we able to gauge an idea of how many hundreds of thousands of unique users actually visited Frightmoore! If you have read any of it yet, go on and take a look.

While we're on the subject of plugging stuff don't forget to check out The Journey of Light an independent animation project that is currently underway written by our very own Azure.

ICv2 are reporting an interesting trend with Amazon.com's manga best seller list. Apparently Yaoi is three of the top five, four of the top ten and six of the top fifteen manga titles. ICv2 point out that these sales are only on Amazon.com as the American Bookscan list doesn't not match with these sales figures, with only Del Rey's Tsubasa Volume 3 appearing at the top of both lists.

ICv2 speculate that people purchasing Yaoi prefer the privacy and relative anonymity that on-line reatilers offer and that the two main Yaoi publishers Digital Manga and CPM Manga don't have the marketing clout or number of titles compared to other publishers with titles at the top of the graphic novel lists.

With your support Otaku News are keen to compile a definitive survey for 2004 about what anime titles our readers would like to see released onto DVD in the UK. This can include TV series, film, OAV old and new. We are not going to do a web based poll, since that would limit the options, we are going to do an open survey to hear what you really want to be released in the UK. To take part please email your suggestions to AnimeSurvey@otakunews.com

Your e-mail address will only be used for this survey and once the results have been collated your details will be deleted. They will not be passed on to a third party for any reason. This survey will run until the 24th of December.

With all the Japanese news currently focusing on the aftermath of the earthquake that hit the Niigata prefecture, I thought it would be nice to cover some more positive things (there's nothing like escaping from reality).

It's about time some of you have a look at The Daily Yomiuri Website, they are running some nice stories about the following: